The funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is scheduled for this weekend, a spokesman for the late Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rival announced on Wednesday.
The funeral will be held in public and will be held at 2pm MSK (Moscow Standard Time) on Friday at a church called the Iconic Church of the Mother of Sorrows in the Mariino district of the capital. ” Navalny will be buried in a nearby cemetery.
Navalny died earlier this month in the highest-security penal colony in the Arctic Circle. President Biden and other world leaders have blamed President Putin and the Kremlin for the deaths, but Russian authorities have not yet determined the cause.
Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said there were many difficulties in arranging a date for the funeral as many places refused to hold it.
Yarmis explained: In the post of XPreviously on Twitter, people close to Putin’s critics posted that they were “looking for a place where we can hold a farewell event” and that they had “called most private and public funeral homes, commercial venues and funeral homes. ” he posted.upon
“Some say they are full. Some refuse when we say the last name ‘Navalny,'” she wrote Tuesday morning. “In some places, we were told that funeral homes are prohibited from working with us. We have searched all day and still cannot find a farewell venue.”
Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that the funeral and memorial service were originally scheduled for February 29, but that Putin and his allies wanted the funeral to be held on the same day as the Russian president. He said he had made every effort to prevent it. Leaders’ Annual Address to Congress.
he Said Russian authorities “reverted to blackmail” and tried to force the family to hold a “quiet family funeral.”
“And it soon became clear that by February 29 there would be no one left to dig the grave,” Zhdanov wrote, according to the translation. “It’s possible by the 1st, it’s possible by the 28th, but the grave hasn’t been dug by the 29th.”
“The real reason is clear. The Kremlin understands that no one needs Putin and his message on the day of parting with Alexei.” “We don’t care about the message.”
Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the late opposition leader, said on Wednesday that she was also concerned about the possibility of being arrested at her husband’s funeral.
“I thought that 12 days after Alexei’s death would give me time to prepare this speech,” Navalnaya said in a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday. “But before that, we took Alexei’s body and spent a week preparing the funeral. So I chose the cemetery and the coffin.”
“The funeral will take place tomorrow, but it remains to be seen whether it will be peaceful or whether the police will arrest those who came to say goodbye to Alexei,” she added.
Following her husband’s death, Navalny vowed to take over Navalny’s work and fight corruption in Putin and Russia.
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